


A Tender Resignation

by YouLookGoodInLeather



Series: 30 Days of Dark Fandom Challenge (ACOTAR) [6]
Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/F, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Soul Bond, Soulmates, accidental salty commentary on society's obsession with 'perfect' love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-03
Updated: 2017-10-03
Packaged: 2019-01-08 14:39:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12256395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YouLookGoodInLeather/pseuds/YouLookGoodInLeather
Summary: Azriel is extraordinarily lucky; He is able to see the strings tying soulmates together. Too bad it's making him miserable.





	A Tender Resignation

**Author's Note:**

> So I wrote fluff (sorta) for a Dark Fandom challenge, fite me. Written without being able to see the screen and the spell check non exinsistant. So you know. Quality stuff kids.
> 
> **Prompt: Azrien, Forbidden Relationships**

Azriel has been told by nearly everyone he’s ever met that he is ‘lucky’. 

He is lucky because he has a gift. A unique and rare gift that few people share. This gift forms the foundation of his livelihood, shapes the way in which he perceives the world around him, guides how others interact with him, not one aspect of his life remains untouched by his gift. 

And it is making him miserable. 

Nestled into a mismatched collection of chairs beside a quaint little cafe, he sits sipping lapsang tea and watching the Rainbow float freshly fallen autumn leaves down towards the estuary. War ravaged this place not ten years ago, though you wouldn’t be able to tell by sight alone. With the Night Court claiming victory, it was relatively easygoing for them to rebuild and recover, the last lingering fractions of conflict solely detectable in the way people watch the skies a little too often, jump at the sound of any breaking. It’s a tentative peace, yes, but a privilege in this post-war era. Most courts aren’t so lucky.

Azriel doesn’t see the city and its residents like they do. As he watches couples and crowds and loners trundle about, he sees a world of crimson. 

Tied to every passing stranger’s chest is a string of red. To be exact, it is fixed upon the left frontal forth rib, knotted just over where the septum of the heart lies. Sure, there’s some deviation, a couple of people have it knotted on their right, an anomaly Az still hasn’t worked out the meaning of, but although the position may vary, every single person in the world has a trail of red fixed to their heart. 

For some, this string has been severed, trailing from their chest as a lonesome ribbon blowing in the wind. Others have not one, but multiple strings pulling in all directions, some have thick strings or thin strings or - for the ‘lucky’ ones - strings that connect them to the person holding their hand. 

Soul strings. Invisible to almost everyone in the world, these immaterial pathways of crimson mark out the connection between soulmates. And it is Azriel’s job as a soulsinger to help them. 

His days are filled with the love of others. These invisible strings not only connect people by fate, but by emotion. They conduct the feelings and thoughts of each end to one another on a subconscious level, and when these conduits become agitated, it is his job to soothe them. When the partners know one another, it is often a simple matter of talking and empathising. When they have yet to meet, then his role is truly essential. 

With two fingers pinching the string, he can absorb the tension straining the connection. It frees up the pathway to allow the soulmates to connect without distraction once again, like removing noise from a recording. It is far from pleasant to take on the emotional distress of another, but this is not the worst part of the job. 

The ones he truly hates are the consultations with severed souls. Severance occurs through two typical fashions. The most common is when a soulmate has died. This leaves the remaining party beyond consolation, for a part of them is buried within that last moment of life, the trauma of being ripped from this world and shoved somewhere else. People often claim to have visions of another realm, an afterlife, or of a boundless void that feels like nothing at all. Whatever they see, even if they claim it is paradise, it is not a knowledge they are built to handle. It drives most people insane.

Unless they consult a soulsinger. With precision and care, Azriel can unbind the knot of the bond and free them from it entirely. This removes the intensity, the instinctual passion of a relationship, the inability to move on. Most fear it removes the feelings entirely and thus few eagerly come to visit him. When they are sectioned, it is far harder than any voluntary removal. The screams…

There is another cause of severance. Be it from betrayal, abuse, love for another, or some other intense emotion, people can sometimes cause their own soulbonds to rip. Rejection of a soulbond is rare, especially given the stigma around it, but Azriel has felt the pain in bonds causing tragedy. Just touching a forcibly ripped string leaves him unable to get out of bed for at least a week, all the suffering endured to breaking point left in that manifestation of a relationship.

But he is ‘lucky’. And he is, for it means that people believe him when he says his string is strong and healthy and he can take their agony for them, because he has that to fall back on. He is lucky that no one else can see that he does not have one.

His father could see soulbonds too. And when he, an unwanted birth in the first place, was born with nothing tied to any of his ribs, he was labelled an abomination and a blight upon the family from the get go. After all, what kind of monster could be so incapable of connection that they didn’t even have a soulmate?

Certainly, there are people in the world who do not experience love in the sexual or romantic kind. But they too have strings, binding them to those people who can be exactly what they need another person to be, be it a platonic lover or the ideal friend. They suffer far less antipathy from society than those with severed or removed soul strings, whose lives are bluntly deemed ‘over’ now that they lack their perfect others. 

So what people would do if they knew he never had one, he does not like to try and imagine. 

Leaving his tea half-finished, he thanks the waitress and sets off back to his townhouse office for his afternoon appointment. Maintaining his appearance as the calm, collected therapist this soulmate-obsessed world relies on is vital. Else they’d bring in another soulsinger, someone who could see through his lies in the briefest of glances. Even Rhysand would be unable to protect him from the fallout. 

So he tidies his desk and checks his appearance, and at two o’clock exactly he opens the door to the next couple.

To his surprise, he recognises one of them. Elain, sister to the High Lady of the Night Court, a woman endowed with the soft kind of smile that could silence riots. A redheaded male he does not recognise stands to her left, but strangest of all, a third lingers behind them. A third Azriel  _ never _ expected to see at his door. 

There is only one other person in the world who never possessed a string, and few people really regard her as a person per say. Born of another world, another dimension, Amren smirks back at him as if she can sense his dumbfounded unease. She always could read him too easily. 

“Az,” Elain says quickly, quietly, as if they are co-conspirators in some kind of plot he never agreed to. “I need you to help us. Please.” 

Because she is too earnest to refuse, and Feyre’s sister at that, Azriel ushers them in and tries not to look too alarmed. The male avoids all of their gazes even after they are seated, electing to stare out of the window. Amren and Elain play his opposites, scooted forward on the edge of their seats and fixing their therapist with intense eyes. 

He can see the string of red latched between Elain and the man’s ribs, can feel its dynamic. He has never felt a bond so quiet, so absent in feeling. It is warm, as gentle as any of Elain’s garden flowers, but where most conduct emotion like constant lighting, this one feels still, more like a lake than a river. It’s unusually calming to be around.

“Az, I know this isn’t… isn’t really allowed. But I was hoping you might unbind me and Lucien.” She glances over to the redhead who remains fixated on the window. “And… could you tie me to Amren.”

Silence. It goes without saying that this is  _ definitely _ not allowed. Az hasn’t even ever heard of such a thing. He doesn’t know if he can do such a thing. The soulbonds are considered predetermined marks of the Cauldron’s sacred will, something they mere physical formed beings could not possibly understand. The consequences-

“Please, Az,” Elain urges, giving his hand a tight squeeze. She is fixing him with those big doe eyes and she has always been so instantly important to him, someone he has always felt an instinct to protect. He doesn’t often get instincts like that, and with their being the closest thing to a soulbond he seems to be allowed, he tends to honour them. “I love her.”

“Are you alright with this?” Azriel asks, turning to the man. Lucien, with golden eyes that betray no sentiment whatsoever, finally glances his way. What Azriel took for muffled distress suddenly morphs into an ever so subtle smile of relief. 

“Please,” he says, pain colouring his voice, but not that bred from loss, but of suffering long endured. “I just want her to be happy.” 

Maybe it’s Elain and her power over him, or the way this man is regarding him with such reluctance to dare to hope, such a belief that whatever is plaguing him will not end, but whatever the reason, Azriel agrees. Unbinding the knot from Lucien is like tearing a staple from flesh, each slight movement unravelling a new hidden facet of discomfort. He needs no words or images to  _ feel _ the years of trying to be cautious, of trying to be there, to be what is wanted and needed but finding it could never be right. That in the end, what was required was separation. 

Swallowing back tears that aren’t his own, Azriel turns to Elain. “You’re sure about this?” He asks thickly, his throat choked up by a past he does not even know. 

“Completely,” Elain and Amren answer in unison, their hands bound together as a kind of premonition. 

Moving on complete guesswork, Azriel tries his best to coax the string around Amren’s rib. It flip flops this way and that, at one point poking through to her heart which sends a jolt through her body that has her sitting bolt upright in a flash. “That felt,” she mumbles, dazed. “That felt amazing. It’s like I could  _ feel _ you.” Elain grins back at her. 

“So it  _ can _ work.”

“I’m not done yet,” Az warns them, the string still unwedded in his hands. 

It is a long, arduous hour, but by the time he has to dismiss them for his next clients, the other end of the string is secured to Amren’s ribcage. The two girls are elated, gushing to one another about how they really can feel it, about how it really did work. “Thank you,” Elain say at the door. “Thank you so, so much.” 

They vanish to go and report back to Rhysand, who apparently sanctioned this experiment, leaving Azriel alone with Lucien. “How does it feel?” He asks him. 

“Good,” Lucien answers. “And awful. Both at the same time. But she’ll be happier now, sharing that with someone she chose rather than someone she was stuck with. So it’s worth it.” 

“Few people would see it that way.”

“I spent a lot of time not paying enough attention to other people’s happiness,” Lucien says quietly. “Not noticing that they were suffering. So… I guess this is me trying to start and make amends for that.”

Azriel only just met this man, and so he doesn’t ask, doesn’t pry further. All he can do is sit and struggle with the feeling that he understands that feeling too well somehow. The juxtaposition between making people happy and hurting himself. Of realising maybe he doesn’t deserve the happiness other people get. After all, his father raised him to know what a monstrosity he was. He’s come to accept that, to shy away from others incase they try to alter it out of misplaced goodwill, and somehow that resignation is echoed in this man’s tone. 

So when he hears the next question, he is caught off guard completely. “Would you… like to get  drink sometime?” Lucien asks him, quite calm, quite genuine. Az’s shock must show on his face, for the other laughs. “I know this probably isn’t the time or place to ask such a thing but… I just got out of a really strange long term relationship.” Even Az finds himself snorting at that. “So whilstI should be heartbroken, I’m strangely excited. I get to choose who I force myself to dine with every night.” 

“Well,” Az finds himself saying, “if you think you can manage to  _ force _ yourself.”

“Is that a yes?” Golden eyes are watching him and though it’s stupid, though he’s argued against it all his life, the mischievous smirk on the other’s lips is infectious. He views his alienation not as condemnation, but as a new world of freedom. And though he doesn’t dare hope it will last, Az finds himself saying,

“Yes.”

**Author's Note:**

> maaaay continue this after the challenge is over idk I have many feelings about soulmate AUs and mate concepts and both love and hate them. So if I do, it'll be a hot mess.
> 
> As always you can find me on tumblr @squaddreamcourt.


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